Author Boo Radley: my Life
by KatnisSorenRainbowDoom
Summary: Author Boo Radley is a mystery to the whole world. For Scouts whole life she wondered who he really was. Now we get to see inside the head of Boo Radley. What was he really thinking on the night Bob Ewell attacked the kids? Why did he never leave the house, and what was it like inside? Disclaimer. *I do not own To Kill A Mockingbird*


**Hi all! I hope you enjoy this! It took me a while to write but it is done now! Yay! BTW there is the N word in there, I don't mean to be offensive in any way and it is just part of the story. If it is too offensive just review and I will cut it out! Hope you enjoy it! **

**~o0o~**

People call me Boo. They talk about me loudly, without knowing me or even acknowledging my presence. Children run past my house, shouting for me to come outside and adult's be-have no better. There were once three children who would never leave me alone. They would shout about me loudly, and share rumours about me as if I couldn't hear them. They never knew why I daren't ever leave the house I dwelled in, and when they asked, the way they asked, I was too frightened to answer their calls.

Me and my family lived in solitude. We appreciated God's work so much that we daren't enjoy it. I stuck by that rule like honey to a tree, and by the time I deemed myself ready to face the world, it had changed too much for me to even dream about entering. When my father died I thought I would be able to enjoy life. Me and my mother would never have to spend the day knelt down on the floor in prayer again, to a God I had long ago stopped believing in. but I was wrong. In less days then it took for the funeral to be organised, my ruthless but devout brother Nathan had invaded our lives and taken the role of my oppressive father.

I would say that routine returned to normal but it never did. The children next door to me were becoming more and more inquisitive. They, doubled with the orphan boy always put Nathan on edge. They would act out scenes of hurtful rumours for the whole neighbourhood to see. The first time I saw them I wept. As a child I had grown up with at least half of the people in this street, but the newer generation just thought of me as a madman, no better than the niggers who tended to their fields of crops. The only difference is that _they_ are getting more and more respect as the days wear on, but I am just becoming a tale for parents to tell their kids to get them to behave.

The first time I left my house in 27 years was to help out the children who ridiculed me every day one summer. Miss Maudies house was ablaze, as ablaze as my feelings I had for her before I was banned from the outside world. When I heard her scold the innocent young girl about her ridiculing me I knew that if I had been allowed to leave this house beyond the age of required schooling (14 in my case) that I would have certainly perused my intimate feelings for her.

Nathan had left the house to help the other men in town put out the blaze. If I didn't know my brother like I do I would have thought that he was trying to put out the inferno to help Maudie and her husband, but knowing him he was thinking about what would happen if the flames reached our house.

But the children from next door were left, effectively, in my care. And I took the responsibility very seriously. They were just innocent children who had been forgotten for a moment amid all of the confusion, but I would never forget them. The night was cold and the young girl was complaining to her brother, but he couldn't do anything and soon they were transfixed with the events transpiring across the street. So I took the responsibility into my own hands by taking her the blanket.

But of course when I didn't get the blanket back and Nathan realised I got the worst beating of my life. My left wrist was broken and never healed right, after that my hand was always crooked, making the hours and hours of prayer everyday almost completely unbearable. Sometimes the pain would be enough to make me whimper out, but that always resulted in more pain.

When my mother died I barely cried. She had receded into herself so much that she almost never spoke. I saw her as the better off out of the two of us. I still had to endure Nathans brutality, unlike her. She was free, and safe from beatings, boredom and ridiculing. No, when I wept I wept because she had left me behind to face the world.

And so during the days I sat there on my own, in solitude and silence, until one day I found a box of trinkets from my childhood. I used to collect them, but then I started giving them away, to the children. I used to put them out there late at night, and then wake up at the crack of dawn in the anticipation of seeing the children receive the gifts. Even now it gives me a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I left the things in the tree they weren't scared of me, so I continued.

After months of this routine, there came a night that will haunt me forever. The children had left to go to their school play a few hours ago, but when they came back it was not in the content, bubbly atmosphere they usually bring, there was just a dire, deathly silence. The only reason I knew there was anything going on was because of the sound of their voices in the distance, and then a blood-curdling scream.

I knew I had to act but I didn't want to. Not only would I have to leave the house, but I would have to help the kids with whatever was going on, and then I would have to look after them for a while afterwards. Another scream. This time I acted before my mind could shout STOP! I ran out of the house and down the road. I stood under the street lamp and could see three indistinct shapes running through the darkness. The largest shape seemed to be moving in jerks, while the smaller two shapes were running at the pace of a slow jog. I tried to call out to the children but my voice came out as no more than a throaty whisper, after years of disuse. So instead I looked around for a weapon. They were nearly on the street when the larger shape lunged at Scout. She was still in her ham costume, without shoes on. She screamed again as she was pushed to the floor. There were dents in her costume from a weapon, a butcher's knife. I leap forward to stop her descent down the hill. Quickly I push her out of the way under a tree, before going to help the boy.

The queasy feeling of fear I had been feeling about helping these children had quickly turned to anger and rage. How dare a man attack two children, alone on their way home from their school performance! Why would he want to harm them? What had these children ever done to him? I had heard stories about his children when the scandal was on and they had less respect than I had. Jem had charged Ewell and I was about to join him, when Ewell picked the boy up, and threw him down the hill. The man stumbled down the hill in a drunken haze, I moved into sight but he still didn't see me. All he could see was Jem. His arm was shattered. I only ever broke my arm once and that was agony, but Jem's arm looked completely _destroyed._ It was leaking blood and bone was sticking out in two different places.

What I did next surprised me the most. Ewell was standing at the boy's head, about to stamp his life out, literally. Quick as lightning I eyed the butcher's knife dropped by the Ewell maniac. I picked it up and did the only thing I could think of. I tackled Ewell to the ground. He was stronger than I would have expected, but after a brief struggle I had the upper hand. After pushing him to the ground I turned briefly to see where the children were. Scout was under the tree still, whimpering. But Jem was in the same position. I couldn't even tell if he was breathing or not, he was that still. I slowly came back to reality, when my fingers began feeling hot and sticky. In a daze I looked down at Ewell, who was somehow covered in a dark liquid, after an age it all clicked into place. My hands were above his chest. In my hands there was a knife. There was dark sticky liquid all over us, coming from the hole from the knife. The dark sticky liquid was blood. Ewell was dead. I had killed him.

I had just broken the biggest commandment. Everything in my whole life was there to supposedly there to stop me from going to hell, and even though I knew that I was going to hell now, I couldn't care less. His life wasn't like a weight on my soul; in fact killing him had made me feel a whole lot lighter. It was as if killing him was letting all of the pent up rage and frustration out. But not in a horrible malicious way as you must be thinking. No, it felt as if my life finally had a purpose. As if saving these children's lives made up for not ever being allowed to contribute to anything in my whole life, and that's how I saw it. By killing that man I had saved lives, but if I had just watched him kill two children in cold blood then their lives would be on my soul. If I had stood idle and just watch the slaughter then it would have been as bad as if I had thrown Jem down the hill, or stabbed Scout with a butcher's knife.

The sound of a broken sob from Scout brought me back to my senses. I rushed over to her and picked her up in one swift move. As fast as I could on my disjointed knees-which were starting to hurt after the adrenaline rush- I ran over to her house, rang the doorbell and placed her down in front of the door. I hobbled back over to Jem, and was about to pick him up when I realised that the movement could kill him. The inner turmoil was fighting a battle within me. Should I pick him up and carry him over to their house, or wait here with him and the increasing pool of crimson blood. Thankfully the decision was made for me, when their farther Atticus Finch and the town doctor, Renolds arrive.

"thank you Author, I know how difficult this would have been for you. You saved my children's lives; nothing I feel can be conveyed into words, except thank you, from the bottom of my heart. They are all I have left." His sincere thank you brought me back from the edge. I managed to force my lips upwards in what I hoped was a smile.

"I've given him some morphine, but we need to get this sorted quickly, or he could lose his arm, at best." finished darkly as he scooped the boy up and rushed back to the house.

Inside the house the horrors of what I had done seemed to diminish. The children were safe, and that was all we could ask for. After examining Jem, the doctor said that he would live; Scout was also fine, with the ham costume taking the knife and possibly saving her life. Then the elephant in the room was acknowledged.

"we should give him some peace, an' quite, after everything he's been through." After that we ambled down to the porch, where a warm wind was still blowing.

"As soon as Jem is able, he will stand trial." Atticus declared, breaking the tangible silence.

"Why? Even if he'd stabbed him, it would have been in self-defence, which he would win. But Ewell fell, on his own knife. "The doctor said.

"I'm sorry if I spoke sharply, Heck," Atticus said simply, "but nobody's hushing this up. I don't live that way."

"Nobody's gonna hush anything up, Mr. Finch." Mr. Tate's voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly on the porch floorboards it seemed that they grew there.

A curious contest, the nature of which eluded me, was developing between Atticus and the sheriff. It was Atticus's turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch. He put his hands in his pockets and faced Mr. Tate. "Heck, you haven't said it, but I know what you're thinking. Thank you for it. Jean Louise—" he turned to Scout. "You said Jem yanked Mr. Ewell off you?"

"Yes sir, that's what I thought… I—" Scout mumbled to the end, when her farther interrupted.

"See there, Heck? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don't want my boy starting out with something like this over his head. Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let the county come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with a whisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, 'Jem Finch… his daddy paid a mint to get him out of that.' Sooner we get this over with the better."

"Mr. Finch," Mr. Tate said stolidly, "Bob Ewell fell on his knife. He killed himself."

Atticus walked to the corner of the porch. He looked at the wisteria vine. In his own way, I thought, each was as stubborn as the other. I wondered who would give in first.

"Heck," Atticus's back was turned. "If this thing's hushed up it'll be a straightforward denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him… if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got." The hint of desperation in his voice was evident even to me. The heated battle was scaring me. If I told them what I had done would I have to face a court? With so many people there- more than I had ever seen, I expected- I would just freeze, and they would find me guilty. But would that really be that bad? I lived in fear of my brother; prison might actually be a relief.

"Mr. Finch." Mr. Tate was still planted to the floorboards. "Bob Ewell fell on his knife. I can prove it."

Atticus wheeled around. His hands dug into his pockets. "Heck, can't you even try to see it my way? You've got children of your own, but I'm older than you. When mine are grown I'll be an old man if I'm still around, but right now I'm—if they don't trust me they won't trust anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear of me saying downtown something different happened—Heck, I won't have them anymore. I can't live one way in town and another way in my home."

Mr. Tate rocked on his heels and said patiently, "He'd flung Jem down, he stumbled over a root under that tree and—look, I can show you." Mr. Tate reached in his side pocket and withdrew a long switchblade knife. As he did so, Dr. Reynolds came to the door.

"The son—deceased's under that tree, doctor, just inside the schoolyard. Got a flashlight? Better have this one." "I can ease around and turn my car lights on," said Dr. Reynolds, but he took Mr. Tate's flashlight. "Jem's all right. He won't wake up tonight, I hope, so don't worry. That the knife that killed him, Heck?"

"No sir, still in him. Looked like a kitchen knife from the handle. Ken oughta be there with the hearse by now, doctor, 'night."

Mr. Tate flicked open the knife. "It was like this," he said. He held the knife and pretended to stumble; as he leaned forward his left arm went down in front of him. "See there? He stabbed himself through that soft stuff between his ribs. His whole weight drove it in."

Mr. Tate closed the knife and jammed it back in his pocket. "Scout is eight years old," he said. "She was too scared to know exactly what went on." "You'd be surprised," Atticus said grimly.

"I'm not sayin' she made it up, I'm sayin' she was too scared to know exactly what happened. It was mighty dark out there, black as ink. 'd take somebody mighty used to the dark to make a competent witness…" "I won't have it," Atticus said softly. "God damn it, I'm not thinking of Jem!" Mr. Tate's boot hit the floorboards so hard the lights in Miss Maudie's bedroom went on. Miss Stephanie Crawford's lights went on. Atticus and Mr. Tate looked across the street, then at each other. They waited.

As the discussion rambled on I thought back Tate's comment. " 'd take somebody mighty used to the dark to make a competent witness…" by that did he mean me? Was I supposed to not only lie about killing a man but stand witness as well? It was too much pressure, and I was about to confess killing the man when Scout tugged on my shirt sleeve.

"do you wanna go home now, mister?" the burning curiosity in her eyes were plain to see. I was surprised to see that she was not scared of me, in fact she seemed entirely happy to see me. It was all I could ever have asked for.

**I hope you liked it! Remember to review and tell me what you thought.**


End file.
